Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus

Weekly Standard ^ | 6:05 PM, OCT 26, 2012 | WILLIAM KRISTOL

[Snuph]

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

[DoughtyOne]

Ann Petraeus served well in theater. Who do we want to direct the CIA, another appointee on the order of Leon Panetta? (Leon is inept to the x.)

I don’t want Patraeus to step down. He’s a good man with in-theater experience. He’s a guy that turned Iraq around. He’s a guy that knows what the needs of our military are. He’s the right guy to make decisions that will actually help our people in the field. Imagine a guy like Panetta in there, fighting our men all the way.

He’s gutless?

Ann, what happens if we have a CIA Director actively seek to take the president down? The next time we get a Republican in the White House, the Left will constantly try to disrupt the CIA Director, and force him to focus on their demands for months at a time.

We have got to try to keep this position as non-political as possible. And while you and I would see his actions a patriotic, a very large segment of the populace wouldn’t, and would want pay-back in short order.

I know what you and I might like to see, but there are times when what we would like to see can’t be achieved without doing our own cause damage.

Clinton was lying his posterior off during his presidency. We called him on it. And then Bush was under attack for lying his posterior off constantly. And he wasn’t.

I don’t want to subject the CIA director’s position to the same type of thing.

[9YearLurker]

Not a peep on the nytimes.com site, though it would be their way to bury it on page 36 of their low-circulation Saturday paper and ignore it completely by the time their large-circulation Sunday edition is out.

[JerseyDvl]

I have to agree with aa because Petraeus was once an honorable man and he has totally tarnished his reputation. We’ve always known that Obama is a liar and expected this from him, not a so called Patriot.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

When and why?

Maybe this is what Obama meant by "flexibility" when he told Medvedev to assure Putin not to worry. So Putin arranged the attack in Benghazi to cut off that supply of weapons to the rebels in Syria? Maybe?

Critters of this ilk don't need no stinkin' rationale.. they got Marxist ideology.

The 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radical, psycho spoiled brats were celebrated in the establishment MSM as the most intelligent generation ever!. They are now arguably that very establishment that praised them and they hold themselves and their ideological issue in even higher regard.

They hijacked the Democratic Party in the 1970s.

[rabidralph]

Just an observation: Doesn’t the Hollywood bin Laden video pump up Obama’s leadership and probably say things such as, “Involved at every level of decision-making,” “in the loop,” “in full command at all times.”? How can Obama be so involved in the decisions on bin Laden but be MIA on Benghazi? It will be interesting to see if the media or politicians make the comparison.

[DoughtyOne]

Okay, then please review this.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2950758/posts?page=101#101

[Always A Marine]

Wow. Folks, get a grip. If Patraeus says he didn’t make the call, then who did? What more does he need to say? We do not want a situation where the director of the CIA goes rogue on the president. He’s limiting his input in the interest of maintaining that distance. Congress is where this belongs. If he’s called, he can answer their questions in a formal setting. That’s how I’d rather see it play out.

Thank you, DoughtyOne! People don't realize that General Petraeus was not in the chain of command of the Benghazi incident.

The senior combatant commander was General Carter Ham, Commander of US Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. Gen. Ham has considerable assets at his command, including a highly capable In-Extremis Force that was forward deployed at NAS Sigonella, Sicily - just two hours from Benghazi. Gen. Ham's command center was monitoring the flash event in real time, immediately evaluating its armed rescue options. And here's the most important fact...

As the combatant commander, Gen. Ham answers ONLY to the Secretary of Defense and the President, in that order. Leon Panetta and Barack Obama are the only two men on earth who could have ordered General Ham to stand down.

[BilLies]

“If the lame stream media does not pursue it, they should be driven from their offices with torches.”
Not very likely.

I will give the MSMerde one more day.......many legitimate options are in play as Occupy and the New Black Panther Party have shown.
Be Lawful and Discrete.

[DesertRhino]

“director of the CIA needs to maintain the perception that our clandestine agencies stand behind the president.”

He swears an oath to us, not to the Fuhrer. If he lied to help advance Obamas cover story, he is 100% as guilty. That whole DC circus and half our generals needs a deep order rooting out.
Petraeus needs to keep faith with the US constitution and the American people. He is a liar and is covering up the worst imaginable crime. Thats the crime of leaving Grunts behind a machine gun, low on ammo, screaming for available fire support, and deliberately abandoning them for political reasons.

And he did the same thing to our men in Afghanistan.
Thats what a PhD in international relations gets you for a “general”.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

HEADLINES...

Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus...

Senate leader Reid in hospital after crash...

[RKBA Democrat]

Since Big Bird has been in the news so much, let’s do this like Sesame Street...

This thread has been brought to you by the conjunction TR. As in TReachery and TReason.

[maggief]

Brennan?

[Ann Archy]

OMG!! Patreaus has watched Iraq go back to Al Queda and did NOTHING!!!!!He might have been great...then he went to the dark side....NOTHING GOOD COMES FROM THE DARK SIDE!!!!

[Mygirlsmom]

Obama Lied - Tyrone Died

More like -

Obama Fiddled While Tyrone Burned.

[jeffc]

Zero, in a televised interview today, did not deny that requests were made. He cannot walk this back! A request of this magnitude would have to be answered by the President, as it would allow armed American troops to enter a sovereign nation. Zero had to give the order, no one else has the authority.

[JerseyDvl]

What you describe here and what Petraeus is actually doing are two very different things.
Nobody is asking that he try to bring down the sitting president just merely tell the truth as to what he knows.
His job description does not include lying to cover the Presidents crimes.

[FredZarguna]

To my knowledge, this is the first word from General David Petraeus. The DNI, who is nothing more than a tool and a very dull one at that, has taken the Party line; but as far as I know, not Petraeus. His silence has been deafening.

[DoughtyOne]

Coupled with the fact that our men on the rooftops were lasing targets, calling in strikes, and being denied, this is very damning of Obama, without Patraeus jumping in with both feet.

The C-130 gunship was in the air, and it was developed for this exactly scenario. There was no need to send in more troops. Just unleash the weapon on station overhead.

The enemy would have stood down immediately.

Yesterday evening a member of the military (someone with some clout I don’t remember who just now) stated that when they can’t get people on the ground in close in circumstances, they fly over one of our fighters close to the ground, and that fairly well breaks up attacks.

Obama did nothing.

[Bernard Marx]

Re: my #61: there’s nothing “hysterical” about the loss of American lives. My use of that word referred only to the political karma that seems to be coming back to bite Obamugabe on the a$$.

[manc]

problem is that most of the media is ignoring this as if nothing happened.

This is worse than watergate and the media fiddles around and doing a cover up

Those navy seals have given their life for this country, they went in and waited and waited and waited for help and oabma slept or just totally ignored this and did he give the order to stand down adn then we know he lied about all of this.

For this he should be impeached and an investigation into th emedia and how they have lied, covered up and helped obama